Writing Tips

General Feedback on Writing

Put the title and your name at the beginning

Don't forget to come up with a title for your paper, and put your name underneath the title.

There are 2 main types of research papers. Papers where you are presenting new research study results, and literature reviews of existing research. In both cases, but primarily the latter one which you are doing, you should try to avoid using first person pronouns (“I” and “We”).

You need to break up your paper into sections. Have bold or underlined headers labeling each section, like “Introduction”, ..., ending up with “Conclusion.”  See the Sample Outline.

Make sure you read both parts of the Duke APA guide, the one on assembling your list of references at the end of the paper, and the part on citing references within your paper.

Try to avoid the passive voice

Try to re-phrase your sentences using an active voice, for example, instead of this:

“A study was conducted by Smith (2005) ...”

try:
“Smith (2005) conducted a study ...”

See also this website on the passive voice.

Avoid broad assertions and hyperbole

Try not to make unsubstantiated assertions or over-generalizations.  Try to think about people who might disagree with that assertation, and what would be a better wording.

As an example, some people last year asserted that education is constantly changing, while others asserted the exact opposite, that education has not changed at all.

Look out for words like "never" and "always", or things like "not changed at all" or "most people believe", that kind of stuff.

Here are 4 ways to overcome assertions:

1. Cite someone who actually made that assertion.  Careful though, because people have asserted just about everything.  Prensky is a common source for quotes and assertions for example, but not all people agree with him, and none of his stuff is based on research and data.
2. Qualify the assertion, make it non-extreme.  "In some aspects, education has changed..."
3. Be more specific, make it less broad.  In what respects has education changed or not changed?  For example:  "In matters of testing and accountability, the U.S. public education system has changed a great deal since the passage of NCLB..."
4. And of course, you can just remove the assertion.